


Meta on BuffyS5 - Spike and Dawn

by shadowkat67



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Buffy the Vampire Slayer References, Episode Related, Essays, F/M, Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:01:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22353766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67
Summary: Season 5 is an interesting counterpoint to early seasons - in that it is in this season that Buffy starts to take on a new role - the role of provider and protector. She never really does the nuturing thing well, that role, oddly falls to Xander, and to a degree Willow and Tara. But mostly Xander and Tara. Spike to a degree takes it on in later episodes, but not completely, any more than Willow does - in some respects Willow and Spike remain in the protector role. Season 5, like the seasons before it also examines the relationships between chaos and order, male and female (gender politics), how we perceive reality and our perception of family.
Relationships: Spike & Buffy Summers, Spike & Dawn Summers
Kudos: 2
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	Meta on BuffyS5 - Spike and Dawn

**Dawn.**

In _Restless_ \- Tara tells Buffy she must be back before "Dawn". And in _I Was Made to Love You_ \- April stops just short of saying it is Always Darkest Before the..."Dawn". When discussing Buffy, one of the major complaints regarding the latter seasons is the addition of Dawn to the cast. Many viewers saw her addition as akin to "jumping the shark" - slang for the show losing its integrity and cohesiveness. Except, in Buffy, Dawn's arrival was in some respects crucial to the character's arc. She provides Buffy with someone else, besides herself, to care about. Someone who doesn't give Buffy anything return - ie. not sex, not friendship, not protection, not guidance, not nurturing. There's two, maybe three episodes that explore who and what Dawn means. The first is "Listening to Fear" - it is at the very end of this episode - after Joyce has come out of surgery. She asks Buffy about Dawn, stating Dawn is not mine? When Buffy confirms it. Joyce responds that Dawn is clearly precious to the world, precious to Buffy, precious in a way that Buffy is to Joyce. She asks Buffy to promise her to take care of Dawn, to look after Dawn in the same way that Joyce would Buffy. To feel for Dawn as Joyce feels for Buffy. In other words - Joyce tells Buffy to more or less consider Dawn her own child.

Then we hit " _Checkpoint_ \- which is about power. Who has it, who wants it, and who doesn't. The least powerful character is ironically the only one who can free Glory from her mortal prison, and launch chaos on earth - this is Dawn. Dawn is also the "little girl". Who Buffy askes her mother to take to Spike to protect. Who she tries to get out of the room before Glory can see her. In some respects, Dawn is herself before she was the slayer, before she had power. Innocent. Human. Yet with a swirling green energy inside. The duality of Dawn echoes Buffy's own. Except Dawn's power, stays hidden, untapped, unused, until Glory bleeds her at the right time and at the right moment. Like Buffy's it is old. But unlike Buffy's it is the source - what she started off as. While Buffy started out like Dawn, innocent, a girl, human, then became the power - super-strong, something other. Looking a Dawn may be for Buffy like looking in a mirror, but it is looking at a part of herself that will remain untouched by the demonic power inside. Won't slay. Won't sleep with vampires. Not tainted by the power of the slayer.

And finally, _Blood Ties_ \- Where Dawn wonders what she is. It is in this episode that Buffy finally figures it out for them both - regardless of Dawn's origin, Dawn's blood is the same as her's, they are sisters. In a way the metaphor reminds me of the old Hayley Mills film _the Parent Trap_ \- where Haylely discovers she has a sister that up until now, had not existed. This is similar in a way - the child of divorced parents, who up until now was an only child, suddenly discovers they have siblings. Of course they protest - "you are not my sister or brother!" Then over time, they realize, yes they are. And it does not matter the origin. As Spike states in _Blood Ties_ \- "Doesn't matter how you started out, what you become is what is important". Tara in _Family _\- is told that this is her blood, her first responsibility is to her blood family, but she can choose who her family is and she picks Willow and Willow's friends. Dawn may not have started out as a Summers, but she has Summers blood running in her vienes, she was sent there and they chose to treat her as one of their own. (Joss Whedon was a child of divorced parents, raised abroad by his single mother, visiting his father on holidays and discovering the younger half-siblings - which shared his blood, but not the same mother.)__

__

__**Spike.** _ _

__In prior posts I've discussed how the theme of sexism plays out in the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Specifically with Riley and Angel. In Season 5, we get yet another angle, although this one is less paternalistic and more about the male's obsessive worship of the mother figure, his wish to save her. And as well, be the center of the woman's universe, her sole desire. As she is his._ _

___Crush _and _Fool For Love_ in some respects act as bookends. Both episodes feature Spike's somewhat twisted relationships with Drusilla, Harmony, and Buffy - but in different ways. In both, Buffy rejects Spike. But who is she rejecting? And why? It's an interesting question. She does not reject Spike for the same reasons Cecily rejected William in Fool for Love. Nor does she reject him for the reasons Warren rejects April.__ _ _

____Actually the Warren/April relationships is in some respects closer to Buffy and Riley - with Riley in the role of Warren. He leaves because Buffy does not fit his needs, but like Warren he projects the reasons on to Buffy, making it all Buffy's fault. She may be to blame, but so is he. For Riley can't handle Buffy not making "him" the center of her world. Same deal here - as Xander states regarding April - it must be great to have a girlfriend who puts you before everything else, does whatever you want, and will support you no matter what. Not a sexbot, not a slave, a girlfriend - Warren insists. But she got boring. Predictable. He preferred the one who argued with him, who disagreed. Who he could not control. So he left April behind. Riley is in some respects the exact opposite - Buffy he can't control, she's unpredictable, and does not make him the center of her world - like she had to a large degree in S4 (Buffy herself admits this to Willow in _Primeval_ and Joyce hits on it in _Restless _, reminding us how little she saw of Buffy that season.) Here, Dawn and Joyce and slaying are the center of Buffy's world - not Riley. And that is why he leaves in Into the Woods. When he returns in As You Were, Sam, his wife, acts a bit like April, she argues with him, but he is clearly the center of her world as is his work. She joins him, leaving all that she knows behind. That's what women should do.___ _ _ _

______Spike obsesses about Buffy. She is all he can think about. He draws her. Possibly writes poetry about her. Steals photos, steals her sweater, dresses Harmony as her...he is drowning in her. She has become the "center" of his universe, much as Dru once was, and Cecily and to a degree his mother. Spike tells her as much in _Crush_ \- you are all I think about, all I care about, all that I want or desire in this world. You must feel the same in some way! The first time he attempts to tell her, she cuts him off. Rejects him. States that no, this is not going to happen. He is not in love with her. They are not going to be dating. And he goes home, shaken, depressed, much as he ran off after Cecily rejected him in _Fool for Love_._ _ _ _ _ _

______It is a funny scene actually - if you look at it from a certain angle - and the writer sets it up well - starting with a conversation regarding Quasimodo, and building gradually to Buffy being told that the vampire who tried to kill her for about two years, stalked her as prey, and now is, to her way of thinking, a reluctant informant - suddenly is in love with her. Buffy's reaction is amusing, because it demonstrates how completely oblivious she is to what is happening around her. Just as she'd been oblivious to Riley's needs, she is equally oblivious to what has been going on with Spike. Her attention is focused on Dawn and her mother, she sees little outside of that, and will do anything to keep them safe - including place them with Spike if she has to. Romance is the last thing on her mind. And she worries about that, worries something is wrong with her because it is the last thing on her mind. She does not want to be loved. Love burns. It hurts. And it distracts. And she does not have the time or energy to center her attention on someone else - the way she did with Angel and later Riley, particularly if they plan on leaving her the moment she turns her head or her back is turned. Which is what Warren did to April - April was there for Warren, ran to his rescue, knitted his sweaters, everything - but he left, without saying goodbye, without telling her why. Just up and left._ _ _ _ _ _

______So, Spike rejected enters his crypt and he comes upon Drusilla. The scene in some respects is an echo of the flashback in _Fool For Love_. _As in Fool for Love _, he tells Dru to leave, but she seduces him, and he follows her to the Bronze, they dance and play at being who they once were for a bit - but Spike is moving in the opposite direction in _Crush_. He is moving towards William the Bloody Awful Poet - _the Fool for Love_ and away from Bad Boy Spike the Seducer, who can win any girl he wants with a smirk. The game he and Dru played is no longer fun, all he can think about is the girl he can't have. He has Harmony, who also plays with him and while it is tempting to say she is like April - she really is not. Harm clearly annoys and grates on his nerves. He seems to tolerate her out loneliness. The desire to be with someone, anyone. Until Dru returns and he more or less pushes Harm out. And it is at this point, Harmony realizes that she can't change Spike - turn him into the perfect boyfriend that she desires. She can't make him love her. Anymore than Drusilla can turn him back into the boy he once was - her dark knight, her champion, who killed slayers for her. He is beyond her grasp. Although he does try, briefly to go backwards, just as Angelus tried in Innocence thru Becoming, but like Angelus, his head is filled with Buffy.___ _ _ _ _ _

________When Buffy arrives at his crypt, she ventures down into the bowels of it, and sees first hand the depth of his obsession. It is a shrine, with photos and drawings that he has done. Different poses. A mannequin with a blond wig and wearing her sweater. Understandably creeped out, she emerges from his crypt, seeing him leering down at her - much as Dracula may have leered down at an adventurous Mina Harker or Lucy. And Drusilla stuns her. When Buffy wakes, she is chained to a wall, and Dru tied to a post - while Spike gives her an ultimatum, she can either admit she has feelings for him, that there is some chance, or he'll let Drusilla kill her. When she refuses, stating the only chance he had with her was when she was unconscious, he loses it. And throws a fit. Finally admitting to all concerned that his feelings for her are driving him mad._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Madness is a theme in Season 5. The fabric of reality being torn asunder. Order devolving into cases. Roles being switched. Joyce's brain tumor. Glory's madness due to her imprisonment in the mortal realm, which causes her to make other's crazy in order to make herself sane. And now Spike. His obsession with Buffy coupled with the chip has to a degree made him insane. "I know what I feel for you is wrong! You think I don't know it? I do. This thing between you and me, can never work. I'm not a complete idiot. You think I like having you inside me, destroying all that is me, so only you are left? You say you hate it, but you won't leave!" Or "I'm drowing in you Summers, I'm drowning." Much as Glory is being driven insane by having Ben inside her and vice versa. But is it Buffy who is driving Spike insane or Spike himself? William, the part of him, that was, that existed before he became a demon? Ironically who he was originally is haunting who he has become. After all this time, he is still at his core the fool for love._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Buffy rejects him because he wants her to place him at the center of her universe. To let him in, because he demands it. I love you - he says, so you have to love me back! I will force you to. And she slaps him across the room. I was not made to love you, she seems to be saying. I am not defined by you._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________The next episode, _I WAS MADE To LOVE YOU_ , Spike goes up to April, possibly to make Buffy jealous, possibly to show he can get anyone in the room and April throws him through a window. What he said to her we don't know. Possibly something seductive, or sexually suggestive. It is an amusing scene and I laughed hard during it. His pursuit of Buffy at this point in the story is about him, not her. She is driving him nuts. Everything he does is about her. She is the center of his universe. So why can't it be the same?_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Two seasons later, we see this sentiment explained and echoed in the controversial episode _Lies My Parents Told Me_ \- by both Robin Wood and Spike - who in the episode, are upset that they were not the center of their mother's universe. Spike tells Robin - that his (Spike's) mother loved him because he was the center of her universe, and Robin's did not, because he was not the center of her's. That's the problem with slayer's, Spike states, they put other things first, not us. Obsessive love. Where the object of one's affection is all that matters, the world falls away, and nothing else exists. The type of love examined and romanticized in books such as Twilight. But it is also dangerous - hence the metaphor that Whedon associates with it, vampirism. Angel and Buffy's love was "obsessive love" not nurturing love. Their love destroyed everything and everyone that lay in their path, especially themselves. Riley leaves Buffy in S5 because he yearns for the obsessive love she had with Angel, where she cried all the time, and was clingy. He wants to be the center of her 'verse. And Spike...wants that love, it is what he had with Dru, it is what he had with his mother. There is nothing but love. Love is all there is. Love defines us. A poet's words. The woman is nothing more than a part of him, a rib from his rib cage, and when they are joined - they are complete. Whole. She does not exist outside of that. And she cannot be hurt because he would feel pain if she is._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Buffy is right when she calls this twisted. For it is. In it's way. This wild love, she tells him later in _Seeing Red_ , burns everything in its path, until there's nothing left. She should know, it is after all what happened with Angel. And to a degree with Riley. Love without trust, Buffy knows all too well, cannot sustain itself._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Getting back to my initial statement, at the start of this post, Spike's feelings for Buffy are also to a degree sexist, he defines her by his own need of her, his own frustration. She does not exist for him outside of it. And her friends, her sister, her mother are tools to get to her, just as they had once been tools to make her miserable. Giles is correct when he states it in I WAS MADE TO LOVE YOU - we are not your means to get to her. He blames her for what he feels. She does not exist any more than his mother or Nikki or Harmony or Dru exist outside of it. They are responsible for his predicament, not himself. He like Riley and Angel before him projects the responsibility to a degree outward. He does not begin to take responsibility, as Angel does not begin to take it, until he is ensouled. Without a soul, he seems almost incapable of doing so._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________I will give up evil for you, he tells her, but only the evil that she can see and taste. He makes her his mother, his role model, his goddess - much as Ben makes Glory his, giving up good for eternal life. Spike gives up evil for Buffy. It's appealing in its way. As Xander states in I WAS MADE TO LOVE YOU and INTO THE NIGHT, to have someone want you that badly, desire you that much...isn't that heaven? That is until they realize you don't feel the same? Or assuming you do, until you wake up one day and realize you have to go to work, and well live?_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Xander's initial reaction to Spike's feelings for Buffy makes sense. Her worst enemy. The fiend who kept trying to kill her. The big bad, who said how much he detested her. And she dested him. To be in love with her. Funny. Because it is the worst thing the writers could do to Spike. Make him fall in love with someone who could never realistically love him back without compromising who and what she is in a major way. It's not the same as her relationship with Riley or Angel. Who when she met them, were fighting demons and trying to protect and help her. This is a man who killed two vampire slayers. Who when they first met, informed her that he would kill her. Dancing with Spike is dancing with death. For both of them. And Spike, Buffy may well realize on some deep level, is a bit in love with death. Always has been. He's seductive, just as Dracula was seductive._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________But she is not quite sure what to make of him. He is as Warren relates about Katerina, unpredictable. He always surprises her. And keeps helping, whenever it suits him. A trickster, if there ever was one. He turns her on and repulses her at the same time. Can he change? She does not know. She assumes not, because if he can, what does that say about vampires, what does that say about Angel, what does that say about good and evil? It stops being simple, black and white, clear._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________**Dawn and Spike** _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________For now, it is easier to shut him out. Swing the door closed. I am not yours, she cries. We are not together. You are not my boyfriend. Buffy informs Xander, by way of explaination, that she needs to stop worrying about guys, to move on. That she worries if the only one's she'll get are the dangerous ones, the one's that will hurt her like Angel, who she can't have, mustn't have. Will another, normal one like Riley ever come around? Has she missed her chance? Xander states he will, there are plenty out there. It takes time. But not now, she thinks. And calls Ben to break off their date...leaving a message which Glory picks up. While Spike goes off to get a robot version of Buffy, exactly like her, except devoted to him, and his every need, the perfect girlfriend. And Buffy, reassured walks into her home and finds flowers have been delivered for her mom, from Brian, with a question mark about another date. Smiling Buffy turns to greet her mother, only to see her mother's corspe lying on the couch. (The Body)_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________She feels in that moment her world dissolve around her, reality flips, and she is no longer the child, no longer has the luxury to date or dance or laugh or devote herself to a man such as Riley or Spike...she's the head of the household now, protector, provider, nurturer...her mother has left the building. It is now all about Dawn. Her sister, her daughter, her self._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________So Buffy redefines herself as more than slayer and girlfriend. She takes on the father role with Dawn as well as the Mother. Her last word in I WAS MADE TO LOVE YOU is possibly the most telling..."Mother, Mom, Mom...Mommy." She becomes a child staring at her mother. Lost._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________This bit relates back to both Dawn and Spike - in that Spike places women at the center of his universe and expects the same, you love me or I kill you. The demon mother in his head. The mother he is constantly trying to save. And Dawn, the child, innocent, untainted, that the mother keeps trying to protect from the world. To hide. To keep chaste and safe. Away from the vampires and fiends. Finally Joyce, the sick mother, with a brain tumor, trying to date, trying to care for her daughters. Buffy is all three - Joyce and Dawn and Spike. Mother and child and protector. Caught betwixt and between. She wants to save her mother, but can't. She wants to be Dawn, pumpkinbelly again, and she is on her way to becoming her mother to Dawn._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


End file.
